THE CLAIMS OF THE HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS UPON ITS MEMBERS OF THE PRESENT DAY. BY EDWARD BROWN. AN ESSAY READ BEFORE THE NEW YORK "FRIENDS' SOCIABLE," NEW YORK: WM. WOOD & CO., 61 WALKER STREET. 1868. FRIENDS OF "THE SOCIABLE: 99 I WOULD speak to you this evening of books and reading, in connection with the history and religious literature of our own Society. I shall endeavor briefly to advance the special claims of this history and literature upon our due appreciation at the present day. I would it were in my power fitly to advocate so noble a theme; fitly to present the rich rewards that would await our unlocking for ourselves more inquiringly the intellectual, moral, and spiritual treasury of our own Past. How many apartments there are in the old, time-honored Castle of Quakerism that we have never entered! How many gems hidden there, now lost in the mist of years, should be restored, for our own light and guidance, and the promotion of Christian truth! How many time-worn manuscripts, out-of-print volumes, ponderous, unportable folios, powerful essays-political and ecclesiastical, eloquent sermons, personal letters, and apostolic epistles should be brought forth, and the proper courtesy of modern improvement shown to many of them in the shape of portable forms and attractive types, that they may enter again the wide world's warfare-a living power! Books," says Milton, are not dead things, but do contain in them a progeny of life, as active as that soul whose progeny they are. Nay, they do preserve, as in a phial, the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. They are as lively and as vigorously productive as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and, being sown up and down, may chance to spring up arméd men. A good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life!" 66 To plead for the study and dissemination of a literature is presumptive of its worth. Its worth, its power for good, depends upon the depth and purity of its sources. What is literature? Not merely what is printed or written. Lite rature proper, distinguished from Science which is everprogressive, and, like the coral insect, builds upon its own researches, till its crescent islands of Fact rise from the sea with all their palms-distinguished also more decidedly from the false ephemeral productions of the day-Literature presents to us the generic quality of permanence. Books that float down the stream of the centuries, keeping their integrity by their vitality-they are emphatically Literature. Things that are done-once and forever-which one cannot imagine ever to be repeated. What borrowed light will ever impinge upon the clear-defined disk of Scott, or Wordsworth, or Coleridge, or Burns, or Milton, or Shakespeare? And in minor lights when will the world need another Elegy to a Country Church-yard-another Deserted Village-another Walton's Angler? When it needs another Dante or Homer--another monody of Job, or cluster of Pauline Epistles. And in this relation that magnificent library, the Bible, stands foremost in literature; because the books of the Bible, those columns in the temple of God's unchanging Truth-sculptured by Prophecy, wreathed with Poetry-are forever embalmed in the immortal permanence of a Divine inspiration. Looking forward to the ages to come, it may be fairly assumed that any literature will be lasting in its influences, in proportion to its assimilation in truth and purity to the Scripture ideal ;for Truth alone is undecaying "The eternal years of God are hers." Tried by this standard, we need not be ashamed of our department of letters. We need not wait, as we often seem to, for some distinguished philosopher or scholar outside of us to introduce us to our own authors: for Coleridge, and Southey, and Spurgeon to do honor to Fox; for Lamb to be eloquent for Sewell and Woolman, or for Encyclopædias and Reviews to study brilliant portraits from our historical pictures. In the world's great library, the little unpretending neglected niche for Quakerism should be widened to its merited proportions. It has there already treasures of its own, unique and peculiar, that will continue to command the regard of the deepest thinkers. The rise of Friends is an era in history. The hold their essential principles have taken upon the Christian world, is the most significant and prophetic fact in religious annals since the Reformation. What is the full meaning of this fact? What if these great principles have but just entered upon their morning labor, with a vast field of certain conquest before them! If we would be the better assured of our position in this respect, let us glance for a moment at our early history,—that rugged mountain-range in our far horizon, so toned down now in aërial perspective. There were many Friends' Sociables in those early times, held under very different circumstances from this. There was one held about two hundred years ago, in the winter of 1662, at Newgate prison. In that gathering were Burrough, and Elwood, and other noble men and women too, whose names could be repeated here with associative interest, were we as familiar with their lives as we ought to be. Imagine the halls of Newgate, described at that time as very full of men and women Friends--the weather cold, poor accommodations for food or lodging,-many of their number sick, and all of them so patient, so cheerful, so loving to each other! Need we wonder at the rock-like firmness of Fox, the demonstrative power of Barclay, the flaming energy of Burrough, the clear depth of Penington, the broad wisdom of Penn, the feminine purity of Elwood, coming forth from such fires of suffering, faithfully endured in allegiance to their Lord! What brought those people there? and what kept, that very winter, between four and five thousand members of the Society of Friends incarcerated in the foul jails and dungeons of Great Britain? Could we fairly estimate the cause, the deep-seated principles involved in this great moral phenomenon, where property, homes, the tenderest family ties, were all joyfully given up for a joy and a kingdom not of this world--could we place ourselves on the stand-point of their spiritual vision, we should have the key to the value of that earlier religious literature they have left us, and a better estimate of the religious Liberty they so largely aided to purchase for us and for the world. |